


balaclava creams

by motherfleckers



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, set during episode 23
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:19:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motherfleckers/pseuds/motherfleckers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos would like to stop panicking someday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	balaclava creams

**Author's Note:**

> this was a fill for a kink meme [prompt](http://nightvalecommunitykink.dreamwidth.org/822.html?thread=67382#cmt67382)! it sort of got away from me a bit so i'm super sorry if it's not exactly what you wanted, anon. i hope you like it anyway!

It is a normal night in Night Vale, Carlos thinks. After such a thought, he usually follows it up with a “for Night Vale anyway” out of habit but as of late, he’s finding that pretty redundant. It’s an established fact that Night Vale is not the norm he’s used to, so why waste the time and energy on a thought that really doesn’t make any sense to anyone but him at this point? It’s a futile task and he has much more important and crucial matters to dwell on than some sort of useless thinking when he’s already busy with so many other thoughts. Heck, Old Woman Josie called him just this afternoon to tell him that the Angels are worried that if he keeps thinking the way he does, the Sheriff’s Secret Police might send someone to talk to him about using up his biweekly allotted amount of creative thought.

(It would just be a warning, she followed it up with, no _real_ reason to worry. He is still pretty new in town and your first year has quite a grace period, so he’ll probably keep all his fingernails. Maybe. Still, it would be good of him to stop thinking so freely. The Abandoned Mine Shaft might have HBO now but they’re still completely missing season three, episode nine of Game of Thrones for some reason. She hasn’t a clue why and Erika won’t tell her no matter how many times she asks.)

He still isn’t sure how she got his number.

Either way, the thought is over with and he decides it’s time to move on. He’s in his lab tonight, not really for any real purpose than he didn’t have much to do and his lab always kind of makes him feel safe. A sort of... first defense on nights where he wasn’t sure if Night Vale would be sucked up by a black hole while he slept or not. Actually, it probably wouldn’t be sucked up by a black hole, he thinks. Not because of it being scientifically impossible or anything as _strange_ as that but because it might just be too boring for Night Vale. Black holes? Haha, _please_.

Carlos frowns at the table in front of him, deciding he should probably go a different route with his thoughts before he gets in trouble. Looking up only provides him with one solution: the radio. Cecil is probably on by now, isn’t he? Actually, he always just happens to be on when Carlos decides it’s time to listen and while there’s probably a reason for that, Carlos values his safety too much to think too hard about it. So, he goes and turns it on, going over to the table where most of his in progress experiments wait for him. He hasn’t collected tonight’s data on some of them so why not do that now?

“—they sprayed themselves and reporters with shaken-up two liters of warm Sierra Mist.”

There is a curious look thrown to the radio at that but Carlos isn’t entirely sure he wants to know what had come before it. Still, it is good to hear Cecil. He likes Cecil, he does, and he knows that Cecil has... feelings for him. Though, Carlos is still quite on the fence about if Cecil actually means those feelings or not. It has to be a gimmick, right? Something to play up for laughs on air and make people like the new guy more. Cecil is that type of person, a nice guy who would help a friend out. He was always there for Carlos when he had questions and insisted immediately the first time they met on making sure Carlos knew he was available if he needed help or advice or anything. Anything at all! He was quite intent on pointing that out. Still, the extent of that anything couldn’t be that far, right? It’s just something people said, something friendly, nice people who like to help when they can said to people who they thought needed help.

If Cecil thought telling Night Vale that he was in love with Carlos and constantly praising Carlos on air was helping him, well, that was a nice gesture, right? People did treat him better after all, and it didn’t really bother him that much. If he does feel a bit gooey (metaphorically, always metaphorically) on the inside when he interacts with Cecil and if he sometimes wonders what it would be like if the whole thing really wasn’t just an on air joke and Cecil really did actually want to go out on a date with him... well! That was his business, wasn’t it?

He thinks back to the coffee “date” then. That... horrible, horrible coffee date that Carlos almost wanted to cancel after hearing Cecil’s broadcast about it and in his insistence to keep things platonic, he treated Cecil with a cold, almost robotic professionalism during it before making an early escape and avoiding Cecil for weeks afterwards while he soaked in his own mortification. Not his best moment, in all honestly. He felt so bad about it afterwards but instead of apologizing, he just desperately listened to every one of Cecil’s broadcasts after that for any mention of him at all.

There weren’t any.

Which means he panicked again a few weeks ago and ended up going to see Cecil, as casually as he could, right after the sandstorm. That show made him worry for his... friend and though Cecil was a bit shaken those few days after — he seemed to brighten up when Carlos came by with coffee and donuts. He remembered Cecil’s favorites, the Bloodstone Surprises, which apparently came with a tiny bloodstone circle inside the dough of each one, creating new jellies (or what he hoped were jellies) with each bite you took. Cecil seemed to love them, delighting in identifying each new filling he ate and always making soft disappointed noises whenever it was something normal like strawberry or popcorn.

(Carlos isn’t sure what it says about him that he started being able to tell the difference between the types of noises Cecil makes and how desperately he wants to hear all of them. Probably something bad, like the idea of him liking Cecil in more than platonic ways.)

Either way, things are normal again. Not in Night Vale but between him and Cecil which... somehow eases Carlos’ nerves more than if things started making sense in Night Vale. He wonders what that’s all about but Cecil is speaking again and he would like to pay attention.

“If you want to witness the Eternal Scout ceremony, now is the time to run to the burlap tent over the vacant lot out back of the Ralph’s. Scout leaders indicate that the ceremony will be starting any second now, although much of the ceremony is out of mere human control, and so they could not give a specific time.”

Oh, some of the scouts have reached Eternal Scout finally? He wonders if he should go over and take a look — for scientific purposes of course. These are the first ones, aren’t they? And it sounds like it’ll be a typical Night Vale event, which means Carlos should probably go grab his equipment.

“Scout Master Earl Harlan said, 'I’m proud to be the first Scout troop to achieve this rank. I’m also terrified to be the first Scout troop to achieve this rank. The two emotions are mixing inside my body and it’s confusing. It’s confusing.’”

Aw, poor guy. He knows how that feels—

“He shivered. ‘We could have had something, Cecil. Always remember that,’ he concluded, clutching my arm before walking, head bowed, out of the studio.”

What.

Wait.

_What?_

“Well, I think we’re all both proud and terrified most of the time, and that’s because we live in the best town in this county, in this state, and in this nation. That’s where the pride comes from. The terrified part is because life is terrifying. It just is.”

The broadcast gives a slight pause then, the one indicating the shift in segment. As the words begin to take a turn for the soul-shaking, Carlos can tell it is only an advertisement. He looks down at his hands, clutching a beaker a bit too tightly for comfort and instead just setting it down, placing his hands flat against the table. He blinks at the blank wall in front of him, taking a few breaths before shaking his head. 

No, no, that wasn’t really—

It’s not like Cecil is—

Or that he—

…

Well, he’ll probably end up dead tonight anyway considering Night Vale’s mortality rates, right?

Carlos has to smack himself at that thought. It’s petty. It’s cruel. He isn’t that type of guy. He was just... thrown a bit, is all. He’s used to hearing himself be the only person referred to in a romantic light on Cecil’s show. (The brief flash of the names _Steve Carlsburg_ and _Hiram McDaniels_ in his brain are to be ignored.) And no one has ever referred to _Cecil_ romantically and c’mon, it is just a show. Just a show, where Cecil says things to entertain people and some of those things sometimes make Carlos feel wanted and happy and accepted but it doesn’t mean it is _true_. He is Carlos the Scientist on Cecil’s show, not _actual_ Carlos who researches Night Vale and has coffee and donuts sometimes with Cecil but never anything more and never more than once every two weeks because Carlos is a bit too scared of what might happen if it becomes habit and—

And he really doesn’t want anyone else to refer to Cecil romantically nor does he want Cecil to refer to anyone but him romantically. Cecil is— His, in a strange sort of way that isn’t actually official at _all_ and does not hold any weight because Cecil is a grown man capable of making his own choices even if this strange town has weird rules. That has to be _one_ social norm that still holds true though. Just because you have a crush on someone does not mean you have earned the rights to that person’s... romantic... endeavours... Suddenly, he really quite desperately wants to call Cecil. He looks over at his cellphone, sitting innocently on his desk.

“Let’s go, surrounded and confused, vulnerable and trembling, to the weather.”

He can do it. Cecil is on break now, isn’t he? He listens to the melodic tones of the weather, playing through the radio and filling the room. Somehow, he feels even worse about his feelings. He wonders if he’s in denial, he’s not unfamiliar with the concept after all. Maybe he’s in denial about Cecil having feelings for him. Maybe his co-workers were right when they smiled at him every time Cecil was mentioned and maybe the way Big Rico always grinned fondly at him when he went in for his weekly slice while Cecil was doing a show was right. In fact maybe, just maybe, the way Cecil brightened like when the sun rises on Wednesday evenings in Night Vale actually meant more than happiness over your friend coming to see you. If it did mean more, Carlos thinks he’d like that very much.

He takes a breath, the weather is over.

“The ceremony is over, dear listeners. The children are gone. It seems we have come through this crisis, as all crises before, safe and sound, the alarm only a false alarm. The children that had surrounded us were not the threat we imagined.”

Wait, there were children? Carlos swings his head around in panic then but finds himself still quite alone. How strange. He thinks back to earlier, why he came to his lab. It is always safe here. He wonders how far that goes but he doesn’t think he’s stupid enough to test it.

“How foolish we were to worry. How much of our lives we spend building complex prophecies of fear when the world itself is just the world we have always known and gotten along in.”

This calms him, strangely enough.

“Scout Master Harlan was one of the ones taken. I hope that he continues to be both proud and terrified, in whichever new reality he finds himself. I think often about the last moments with him, and the things that were said. I think often about many things. Other things, I think less about.”

This doesn’t.

While Cecil continues on and starts to mention regret, Carlos finally just _decides_ and makes a mad scramble for his phone. He grabs it, pulling up Cecil’s number quickly. (Too quickly, in fact. It is already there the moment he presses a button, text window open and waiting. He doesn’t question this.) The text is very simple. After all, love confessions are just a bit too grand for him. (And he’s scared. So, so, very scared. What if he’s wrong, what if Cecil doesn’t feel that way, what if starting a relationship with someone so integral to the place he’s studying is a very bad, bad move?)

' _Coffee and donuts tomorrow?_ ' 

“Stay tuned now for more voices, more reassuring noise in this quiet world. Good night, Night Vale. Good night.”

The reply comes instantly.

' _Sounds amazing._ ' 


End file.
